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2016 Jury Member

The Rolex Awards for Enterprise

Location: United Kingdom

Marcus du SautoyUnited Kingdom

Known worldwide for his work in popularizing mathematics, Marcus du
Sautoy is respected as one of the UK’s leading scientists. The
charismatic mathematics professor and science communicator is a Fellow
of New College, Oxford, where he has held the Simonyi Professorship for
the Public Understanding of Science since 2008. “A mathematically and
scientifically literate society is essential given the huge role science
now plays in our world,” says du Sautoy. The young du Sautoy was
influenced by the “communicative side” of his mother and the
“mathematical side” of his father, who, in 1978, took him to the Royal
Institution Christmas Lectures – which he went on to deliver himself
nearly 30 years later. With an honours degree in mathematics from
Oxford’s Wadham College and later a DPhil from the university’s
Mathematical Institute, du Sautoy soon gained recognition for making
difficult mathematical concepts palatable to the public. He accomplished
this through his articles in Britain’s leading newspapers and
appearances on BBC Radio and TV, on such programmes as Mind Games, The
Story of Maths, and the more recent Precision: the Measure of All
Things. He has also written books including The Music of the Primes
(2003), Finding Moonshine: A Mathematician’s Journey Through Symmetry
(2008) and The Num8er My5teries: A Mathematical Odyssey Through Everyday
Life (2010). Du Sautoy received the Berwick Prize (2001); the Royal
Society’s Michael Faraday Prize (2009) for excellence in communicating
science (2009); and the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2010 for
services to science. Known as an iconoclast, du Sautoy plays football
and the trumpet. Apart from these pursuits, he collaborates regularly
with many different artists, exploring the connection between
mathematics and music. He is a supporter of Common Hope, an organization
that helps underprivileged people in Guatemala. Du Sautoy is currently
writing a new book, What We Cannot Know.